Before USB Flash Drives, Floppy Disks used to dominate the market. It was so ubiquitous that the image of one of the latest iterations 💾 would represent Saving Files.

One of the problems was the capacity. In 1971, it went from 80KB (~ 80 thousand bytes) to 1.44MB (~ 1,440,000 bytes) in 1987. Though by today's standards that capacity was lacking, it was a great storage device at the moment, and this format lasted for years. Soon after, 2.88MB to 240MB disks were produced through 1999. But in 1999, rumors of a new contender started spread. And yet, we still used the 1.44MB floppy disk.

Another problem was the lifespan. From corrupt files during the save process to leaving the disk on your car's dashboard on a hot/sunny day, relying on a floppy disk to save your data was a gamble. Not to forget, that one could forget the disk somewhere.

After surviving the end of the world once again (the Y2K Bug), the USB Flash Drive came to the market. Since the commonly used floppy disk was only 1.44MB, the first 8MB "ThumbDrive" was a big change, but not comparable to the 240MB disks. The true change was noticeable when saving to the "ThumbDrive". It... was... faster. No doubt that this new technology would change how we save data.

On October 21, 2015, we had flying cars, hover skateboards, self lacing shoes, and USBs (for short) with the capacity of 1TB (~one trillion bytes) with transfer speeds of up to 1,250,000KB/s (compared to 125KB/s of a floppy disks). OK, maybe Marty McFly didn't go Back to the Future. But the transfer rates made an extremely large difference.

However, USBs suffered from similar problems as the floppy disk. USB could be forgotten, left on the car's dashboard (though more resistant now), and just simply stop working. However, there was a different contender rumored to exist since the days of the ARPANET. But the soon to be cloud, was just a puff of steam at the moment.

In 2005, the Box company launched an online file storage/sharing service. With the verge of cloud ☁ computing, online storage became more popular, but lacking in capacity. Until...

Google Drive (former Google Docs) is now offering a 16GB free service and up to 1TB or more of paid service.

It is now the present. USB Flash Drives are going the way of the Floppy Disks. Google Drive is personally the best cloud storage service there is. And just like the other two, there are faults to this.

Because it is a cloud service, it requires Internet access. It is readily available almost everywhere. The problem lies in the "almost". Internet is not exactly everywhere. Thus, USBs may not go out of style just yet. However, Internet availability is the only problem. The cost of Google Drive storage is very inexpensive and even free. If your school has Google Apps for Education, then you should have unlimited storage for free. Taking your files is as simple as login in through an Internet browser. Sharing your files is more secure than lending someone your USB Flash Drive. Plus, it has many other functions...